To me this was the stand out bit:
You could use a similar analogy for computer games and roleplaying games, and say that a computer is to a roleplaying game what a movie is to play. As computers became masters of heavy math then roleplaying games could see their limits and focus on other areas like the social aspect or the physical play area.
Everything you think about Game Mastering is probably wrong: Part I – The whole concept
Saw this idea in some review of ODD. Part of why character death in ODD and many OSR games isn’t as big of a deal character creation takes minutes instead of an hour or more. Building a character is usually less than the length of the combat encounter that killed your previous character. In 5E and many contemporary games making a satisfying experienced character takes an evening session or more.
I’ve been reading/looking into a lot of the in world histories of
Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms and Mystara. Combinations of current canon
and almost canon fanon.
Possibly the biggest standout is a history filled with great works
being created and stopped. By great works I’m mostly talking about
great magical works. Almost seems like more contemporary adventures
are much better at stopping the big bad then historic ones 🙂
Sorta amazing how many historic problems stem from some human wanting
to live forever or just longer.
I suspect Eberron is possibly an exception. I don’t know much about
it’s history, given it was created to be decidedly different and
hasn’t been around or abandoned long enough for gaps in history to be
filled.
Then there are the gods, demi-gods and godlike heroes. Definitely in
the older D&D lore but even today it is sorta of amazing hoe much
Lovecraftianness exists in the mythology. Or maybe Lovecraft and his
literary followers all taped into something D&D lore tapes into.
Also like how pop culture monster creation myths vs. D&D monster
creation myths often differ. I suspect that since the 90’s people have
definately tried to apply more scientific explainations to how
monsters got here and evolved. Like in Greyhawk Vecna rewarded a
Lieutenant with long life making him the first Greyhawk vampire.
Another one is how long historical grudges can be remembered. In world
maybe this is due to long lived elves and other longer lived than
humans.
Dwarves are almost always an afterthought. Oh, and the dwarves just
kept digging in there mines or the dwarves were tired of all the shit
between humans and elves so they moved on and started digging new
mines.
Then you have halflings who were mostly happy farmers and crafts
people just hanging out laughing at all the big people fucking things
up.